


Ante Up

by cupiscent



Category: Cobra Starship
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-16
Updated: 2010-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:31:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupiscent/pseuds/cupiscent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cobras don't have rules, except they do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ante Up

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://community.livejournal.com/no_tags/profile)[**no_tags**](http://community.livejournal.com/no_tags/) prompt #28: Gabe/Vicky-T, drinking games. Thanks to [](http://adellyna.livejournal.com/profile)[**adellyna**](http://adellyna.livejournal.com/) for the quickfire Cobra validation.

Victoria's in mid story, right hand spread, left hand nursing a cigarette, when a brimming shot glass with a cheesy monogram on the side comes into her vision from over her head, like a cloud looming over her parade.

"Fuck," she spits.

When she tips her head back, bumping against his stomach, Gabe's smirking down at her like he's not only got the cream, but thought of a way he can get cheerleaders to lick it off him.

This one's going to be a doozy.

~

The game - or whatever it is - started the first time Victoria got drunk with the Cobras, which was about twenty-five minutes after she agreed to become one of them. Gabe smacked down a full shotglass on the already-sticky table, and Victoria trilled, "My prince!" and reached for it.

But his fingers made a cage around the little glass (she could see the heart and the Y between them, the rest simply part of the cultural consciousness) and when she looked up, he was considering her with a faint superior smile. "You can have it," he declared, like he was delivering the eleventh commandment, "if you declare that your soul now belongs to the Cobra."

Victoria lifted her eyebrows. "Give me the liquor," she challenged, already tipsy and half in love with these boys, "and I'll declare anything you want."

She has wished since that she hadn't said that, but only once, and not seriously.

Gabe lifted his hand, she downed the shot, and looked him straight in the eyes as she swore her soul to the Cobra.

~

Victoria hasn't asked, because she knows Gabe would declare scornfully that there are no rules, and that would be a complete fucking lie.

She also hasn't asked because she's figuring this band out as she goes, same as they're doing her. The uncertainty is worth it for the time she spends cutting up photocopies of Shakespeare into word confetti with Ryland, or the jelly-related in-jokes she trades with Nate, or smashing macadamias with Alex. Or the vicious joy of her grin as she slides the full shot glass in front of Gabe and says, "The redhead merch girl. At least making out."

But there are definitely rules, because the day Victoria comes out in the morning to find the redhead merch girl in their kitchenette, giggling and wearing Nate's favourite t-shirt, Gabe corners her after the show with a bottle of vodka. It has the NY shot glass upturned over its lid, and he says, "Go again."

She shares the bottle around, but still ends up drinking most of it, enough that when she wakes up the next afternoon she remembers pouring (mostly) into the shot glass for Gabe, but not what she told him to do, nor if he actually did it. He says he did, and even if he looks a little uncertain about it, she's prepared to let it go, leaving the glass where it is, wedged in the corner of his bunk.

~

Another not-rule is that they don't talk about it. One time Alex has an arm slung around her shoulders when Gabe presents her with the shot and his demand, and when he laughs and says, "What the hell is this?" Gabe grins blindingly and says, "Nothing!" while Victoria clutches the empty glass and tries to figure out where she's going to find a trophy store.

Another time, Ryland follows her around for fifteen whole minutes, asking variants on, "But why did he give it to _you_?" and she knows he must've already asked Gabe, so eventually she just says, "Because he owes me."

So then when they're planning a surprise party, and trying to figure out how to keep Gabe out of the way, Victoria says, "I'll keep him busy. Take him on a weird errand."

"Underwear shopping?" Nate demands, but Ryland scoffs from where he's stretched out in the sunshine, saying, "_Anyone_ can get Gabe to do anything. You just dare him."

"Or get him drunk," Nate ruminates.

"Or suggest it would make a good tweet." Alex is reading but can still contribute.

Actually, Victoria thinks, the weirder something is, the more you'd only have to suggest it to Gabe. But that's hardly the point. "I trade in sexual favours," she announces, tucking the shot glass into her cleavage.

~

That works out so well, she takes to carrying the glass around in her pocket when it's her turn, just in case she gets a great idea. (She doesn't worry about where she'll get the liquor. They're on tour. _Someone_ will have booze.) It means she gets Gabe once in the middle of a mall, but it also means that the day they're playing Twister on the Academy bus and the Butcher fucking _lands_ on her, there's a crunch of glass.

"Fuck!" Victoria gasps, and scrabbles at the mat, at the furniture, at Ryland's ankle, trying to get the Butcher off her.

They're in the middle of... she doesn't even know, she lost track a week ago, but a long way from New York. The next time they stop she drags Nate with her into every single cheap, tacky store she can find, and how the fuck is there not a single I ♥ NY shot glass anywhere? Aren't they fucking naturally occurring phenomena?

She texts everyone in her phone who's in New York or New Jersey or even Connecticut. She finds out where the tour's going to be in the next couple of days, and when someone comes through, she gets the damn thing Fed-Exed to her.

Alex is with her when she picks it up, and lifts an eyebrow when she shakes it out of its packaging. "You paid fifty bucks freight for a two-dollar souvenir of a place you're not even in?"

"Shut up," Victoria orders, and he just shrugs and does.

~

Gabe announces at a gig that Victoria is the goddess at whose feet he worships.

Victoria lets Gabe pick her outfit for that show.

Gabe spends a whole day, except when they're on stage, in a chicken costume.

Victoria leaves feedback on a fic featuring herself while Gabe giggles down the back of her neck.

Gabe runs a midnight lap of the entire block that their venue's on. Nude. Victoria waits with his jeans. And times him.

Victoria wears a wig and everything and sings Happy Birthday Mr President to Ryland. It is actually his birthday, at least.

She's still wearing the dress later, sitting on the counter and kicking her legs against its surprisingly light pleats, when Gabe comes and joins her. He leers at her rack, and she passes him the shot glass. He takes it easily, raising a questioning eyebrow.

She hasn't quite finalised what she wants, but the buzz of liquor in her veins makes it easy to say, "Make out with William."

Gabe chuckles, glass halfway to his mouth already. "Pics or it didn't happen?" It's been their standard not-rule so far.

But Victoria shakes her head. "I want to see it."

His mouth's open, shot glass pressing against his bottom lip, when he pauses. Meets her eyes for a moment. Victoria isn't sure what she sees there. She's never really sure with him, even after all this. His laughter and his teasing and his invading her space and she doesn't know what any of it means, but she knows enough to know that looking for meaning is probably just a waste of time.

He downs the shot while she's blinking, grabs her wrist, and this feels like her whole life these days - Gabe dragging her, stumbling and giggling, through a whirl of activity.

William's laughing when they find him.

Now, recent internet activities notwithstanding, Victoria isn't actually into the fanfic thing, but oh man does she see what the fangirls are on about. Because Gabe just lunges in, and William squeaks and leans back, but Gabe just leans over him, and the kiss is wild and messy, Gabe's hand around the back of William's neck, and it's goddamn hot.

William's still laughing two minutes later, when Gabe finally releases him. His eyes are bright and his bottom lip's red where Gabe bit it and he gets a hand over Gabe's face and shoves, not hard. "Can I help you?" William asks, unable to make anything like a straight face and apparently not expecting any more response than Gabe's grin, because he's already turning back to his interrupted conversation with a bemused but hardly surprised Patrick.

Gabe's now grinning at Victoria, still gripping her wrist, and Victoria's not sure why she's bothering to even try to act like that didn't turn her on a little.

"Siska!" Gabe bellows, and the passing figure bellows back, "What?" but also pauses to fill the shot glass that Gabe's holding up from the bottle he's carrying. Sisky tinks bottle against the glass, tips Victoria a nod, and carries on.

Victoria takes the shot glass, and braces herself.

~

Gabe drapes himself all over her and sings in her ear and flirts outrageously with Alex, and it's a regular, everyday, normal gig.

Except Victoria takes last shower, and when she's dry but before she's dressed, she double-checks that the door's locked before she pulls her camera out of her bag.

She's done solo photoshoots. She's done them and the boys have commented _extensively_ on them, critiquing them like Victoria's cheesecake shots were course material in some pretentious appreciation-of-art course. Ryland used them as Rorschach tests and Nate papered a whole wall of the bus with them and Gabe had one up as his computer desktop for months. So she knows which one is his favourite.

The first photo she takes is a recreation of that one. Naked.

After a while, someone hammers on the door and Ryland calls out, all fake-British concern, "Have you drowned?"

"Nope," Victoria calls back, flicking through what she already has on her camera. There's nude and then there's _nude_, and she's treading a careful line here.

"We're all hitting this bar. Something Hoopla." It's Alex this time; so very easy to imagine him and Ryland book-ending the doorway. "We can wait for you."

"If you're not going to be, like, hours." That was Nate, yelping as one of the other two smacked him.

"It's cool," Victoria says. "I think I'll get an early night."

"Suit yourself!" Ryland gives the door one last thump, and then she hears their bickering fading away.

Victoria tilts her head, shaking her hair down to cover her nipples, and lines herself up again.

("Naked photos," Gabe said, pressed in close by the crowd, eyes bright. "At least three.")

There's nude and then there's _nude_, but when she's reviewing the photos later, alone on the bus, Victoria discovers she maybe wasn't as careful throughout as she thought she was being. But she's taken lots. She can pick three totally tame ones.

She doesn't.

~

Victoria reaches Gabe's elbow just as his phone beeps that he has a new message; she puts the full shot glass down beside it, and Gabe closes the magazine, tossing it aside. "Oh really?" He leers, shifting aside on the seat to make just enough room for her to sit down.

She doesn't. She braces a knee on the seat and leans over him, moving the glass to between him and his phone - he hasn't reached for it anyway. "Whatcha going to do with them?" she asks, quiet enough that the others, rough-housing in the lounge, won't be able to hear.

"Add them to my blackmail stash," Gabe answers, quickly enough. "I've got you all now."

But there's a smart-arse quirk to his smile, and Victoria smirks. Says, "Well, I want tit for tat."

Gabe's eyebrows go up, but he's already reaching for the glass, laughing easily.

She doesn't let it go until he meets her gaze and she adds, "Video."

He downs the shot without hesitation.

~

Days go by. Victoria expects that he'll send it to her at _the_ most embarrassing moment, and when her phone beeps in the middle of a crowd, she ignores it until Alex starts singing, "Your _phone_, VickyT."

It's never from Gabe. Or if it is, it's completely innocuous.

_Days_ go by, and she stops jumping every time her phone beeps or Gabe grins at her, and starts trying to figure out if there's any precedent for a time limit. There was that time Gabe ordered her to steal Pete's favourite jeans and the little twerp didn't take them off for a whole three weeks; Gabe started making hurry-up noises, but she got him in the end. (Even Wentz has to do laundry sometime.)

She figures out he's waiting for a hotel night - fair enough - and relaxes completely. But it's two days before hotel day when she's sitting in the lounge reading while Nate and Ryland shoot pixelated people and her phone beeps. She opens the message without even looking up from the page, and when she does, it's to see a flurry of movement on the little screen, resolving itself into Gabe's bare chest.

Victoria fumbles, drops her phone, snatches it up again, pauses the video with both of Gabe's hands on the waistband of his jeans and the button undone.

"What?" Ryland says, not looking away from the screen.

"Huh?" Victoria says.

"You squeaked," Nate accuses.

Gabe isn't even around; she doesn't get it. She'd have put money on him being there to laugh at her.

"I, uh, have to make a call," she says, and tries not to move suspiciously fast on the way to her bunk.

It's a predictable bolt-hole, but she's not going outside where other people might interrupt and try to get her to go bowling or something. Still, it _is_ predictable, so Victoria keeps half her attention on the curtain as she hits play again, just waiting for Gabe to spring her.

Fifteen seconds later, she forgets all about the curtain. Gabe on the screen still has his jeans on, but they're open and his hand's down them and Victoria's heart isn't hammering so hard in her ears that she doesn't hear the tiny gasp. She hits pause again (on the second attempt) and boots up her laptop, rummaging around until she finds her earphones.

Watching again from the start, she has the sound up so high that the rustle of fabric when Gabe pulls his shirt off is audible. His gasp goes through her like lightning; she's transfixed by the shifting press of his knuckles against denim. He wriggles up and half out of his jeans and then he's there, cock in hand, hips nudging up into slow, steady strokes.

Not for long, though, before he pauses to shove his jeans off completely. He gets some sort of lotion from somewhere off screen, slicks up his hand... and just goes for it. He's up on one elbow and his stomach's tensed as he jerks himself off. Victoria's skin is buzzing, far away, and her eyes flick up to the corner of the screen and she nearly swears.

Because at some point Gabe's face has disappeared off camera, and it's the most frustrating thing Victoria's ever known. She wants to know what this looks like on him, wants to see what this is doing to him, wants to watch how he comes apart, coming all over his hand, up onto his stomach, hips and hand erratic.

She _wants_.

The curtain's yanked aside, and Victoria flinches even as Alex hollers, "Holy shit, I think she _is_ watching porn!"

He makes no move to grab the laptop, but Victoria slams it shut anyway, yanking the buds out of her ears. "Fuck you!" she gasps, but she's laughing.

In the laughter from the lounge, she thinks she can pick out Gabe's, but it's all sort of jumbled together.

~

It's boiling onstage, and after Gabe calls her La Joya and hipbumps her while she's drinking, Victoria empties the last quarter of her bottle of water over his head. He shakes his head like a dog, and from the other side of the stage Ryland waves and says, "Me next, me next!"

They've been offstage for the final time for approximately eighty-five seconds - God only knows how he does it - but Victoria walks around a corner and practically runs into Gabe. She grabs his wrist for balance; when sees what he's holding, she just shifts her grip up, and takes the shot glass out of his grasp.

And knocks it back before he can say a word.

His eyebrows go up, and Victoria thinks maybe that's genuine surprise or maybe it isn't, but it doesn't matter either way. She reaches up and tugs him down by his still-damp neck. He doesn't need any further encouragement to lick the tequila out of her mouth. She can still taste the salt of sweat - hers and his - over the top of it.

A minute later, he murmurs, "You have no idea what I'm going to order you to do," against her mouth.

She leans back. "I don't care."

"I'm a Cobra," he says, baring his teeth, all attitude and vicious glee.

She matches his grin. "So am I."


End file.
